One of the tougher RPG's of it's day, Mother 1 is still a classic, fun and enjoyable tale.
The story follows and young boy called Ninten (at least we'll take the instruction booklets word for that as you can name him whatever you want to). His home is invaded by aliens and he sets out on a quest to find the source of the evil power and destroy it or something like that. To beat the evil aliens Ninten and company must find 8 melodies scattered throughout the game world. You'll most likely need a guide to get them becuase some of them are just out of the way like there's one where you have use Telepathy on a cactus. I have no idea who would guess that, but whatever.
The battle system is pretty simplistic the standard turn-based affair but with no rolling HP meter so it plays like a regular RPG. The difficulty is much higher in this game than most NES RPG's of it's day. You have to do lots of grinding to avoid getting your head handed to you (obscure EarthBound reference). But of course without a guide you'll have no idea how much grinding to do. It's a game only for the hardcore RPG fans, the rest will get beaten to death by Hippies and cars.
The graphics are standard 8-bit. Nothing outstanding but nothing ugly. But the battle graphics on the enemies are detailed and all the enemies brim with a strange personality. The game also has that trademark sense of humour that the Mother series is known for.
Overall it's a great game marred by some difficulty issues.